The writers before, few as they were, had been almost as numerous as the readers; hereafter the readers were to increase in a geometrical proportion, and each great writer should address millions.

Movable types, first of wood and then of metal, were made, the latter as early as 1441.

Schoeffer, Guttenberg, and Faust brought them to such perfection that books were soon printed and issued in large numbers.

But so slowly did the art travel, partly on account of want of communication, and partly because it was believed to partake of necromancy, and partly, too, from the phlegmatic character of the English people, that thirty years elapsed before it was brought into England.

The art of printing came in response to the demand of an age of progress: it was needed before; it was called for by the increasing number of readers, and when it came it multiplied that number largely.
WILLIAM CAXTON .-- That it did at last come to England was due to William Caxton, a native of Kent, and by vocation a mercer, who imported costly continental fabrics into England, and with them some of the new books now being printed in Holland.